How has the text been encoded to create meaning for its audience to decode. Give examples of technical conventions that support your answer.
The opening shot of the Lights out short film is an extreme long shot of a house, at night from a low angle. This establishing shot reveals to the audience that the short film is going to take place in a house. Furthermore, the low key lighting and diegetic sound of the rain in the shot shows that the film is set on a cold rainy night, this encodes that it could be a horror film because pathetic fallacy and night settings are both common conventions of the horror genre. After this establishing shot, there is then a straight cut to a long shot of a lightly lit hall way. We then seen a female dressed in nightwear, emerge from a door on the left of the corridor, as she does so she is quite close to the camera therefore she is seen in a mid shot, she then turns her back to the camera and begins to make her way down the hall way. This long shot helps the audience to establish the settings, however the fact that the camera is placed behind the woman suggests to the audience that the woman may be being watched, therefore possibly making this shot a point of view shot. This helps to create tension and beings to convey the narrative. As the female character beings to walk away from the static camera towards the end of the hall way, there is another straight cut to a long shot of the woman walking towards the camera from the door she has just walked from, therefore the camera has been reversed. The director could have done this to highlight the fact that the hall way is empty. Towards the end of the shot the woman reaches the doorway, switches the lights off in the corridor and turns to look down the hall. At the end of the hall way there is a dull light spilling from an open door, therefore creating low key lighting, which lights up the silhouette of a person standing and watching the woman, at the other end of the hall way. The low key lighting used in this long shot, helps to create a tense atmosphere for the audience, because they are not able to see much, however it still makes it known that the woman is being watched.
We then see another straight cut to a point of view shot of the silhouette. This is also an extreme long shot, facing down the hall way directly at the woman standing in highly lit doorway. This shot may have been done to make it clear to the audience that there is something else in the hall way and it is watching the woman. The hard lighting also used to create this shot as an element of the mise-en-scene, could have been used to show a harsh contrast between light and dark an therefore suggesting to the audience that whatever is standing in the hall way watching the woman is bad and that the woman is the victim.
We then see a shot verse shot sequence, between the point of view shot of the silhouette and the over the shoulder shot of the woman looking down the hall way. Whilst still standing in the doorway the woman switches the light on and off multiple times almost in disbelief. Slowly, every time the lights go out the silhouette gets closer, when she is right next to the door, the woman jumps backwards, and there is a cut to a close up, reaction shot of her face. This has been done to show the fear and confusion on the characters face, therefore helping to build the scary atmosphere.
After this, in a close up shot we see the woman tape the light switch so that it stays constantly turned on, just before this we see an extreme close up of her hands ripping some tape off. This could have been to make it clear to the audience what she was about to do. After this there is a straight cut to a long shot of a low lit bedroom, where we see the woman climbing into bed.This long shot reveals the mise-en-scene, which is very minimalistic, as all we can see is the bed and a bedside table with a lamp on it. This is significant because it draws our attention to the lamp, which is the only thing lighting up the room and we already know that the silhouette watching her only appears when the lights go out. Therefore, it foreshadows what is about to happen.
We then see another series of shot reverse shots between a close
up of the woman in bed and a long shot of a slightly open door. During these
shots we hear the diegetic sounds of footsteps, making it clear that there is
someone else in the house and we also see the light turn off, causing the woman’s
emotions to deaerate. As the lights go out, the sound of the
footsteps get heavier and faster and the camera beings to concentrate on the
door for longer, this may have been done to foreshadow that the silhouette is
about to enter the bedroom. As the footsteps appear to get closer to the door,
there is a straight cut to a close up shot of the woman as she hides under her
bed sheet, the footsteps abruptly stop and we then get a close up shot of the
woman for underneath the bedsheets. These close up shots are used to clearly
portray the fear and other emptions that the woman is experiencing, by
revealing her face. Furthermore, the close up shots also help to create the
sense of entrapment and mystery, which cause the audience to feel more sympathy
for the woman and tension because they don’t know what is going on outside of
the frame.
